A27017:559
The Saints' Everlasting Rest
The saints everlasting rest, or, A treatise of the blessed state of the saints in their enjoyment of God in glory wherein is showed its excellency and certainty, the misery of those that lose it, the way to attain it, and assurance of it, and how to live in the continual delightful forecasts of it and now published by Richard Baxter ...The saints everlasting rest, or, A treatise of the blessed state of the saints in their enjoyment of God in glory wherein is shewed its excellency and certainty, the misery of those that lose it, the way to attain it, and assurance of it, and how to live in the continual delightful forecasts of it and now published by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed by Rob. White for Thomas Underhil and Francis Tyton, 1650
THE SAINTS Everlasting REST. PART II. › Chapter 4 › Section 3
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
19. Consider also, that all the Adversaries of these Miracles and Relations, could not with all their Arguments or violence hinder thousands from believing them, in the very time and Country where they were done: but that they who did behold them, did generally assent, at least to the matter of Fact: So that we may say with Austin, Either they were Miracles, or not: If they were, why do you not believe? If they were not, behold the ⟨p. 204⟩greatest Miracle of all, that so many thousands (even of the beholders) should be so blind, as to believe things that never were, especially in those very times when it was the easiest matter in the world to have disproved such falsehoods. If there should go a Report now of a man at London, That should raise the Dead, cure the Blind, the Deaf, the Sick, the Possessed; feed thousands with five Loaves, &c. And that a multitude of his Followers should do the like, and that a great many times over and over, and that in the several parts of the Land, in the presence of Crowds, and thousands of people: I pray you judg, whether it were not the easiest matter in the world to disprove this if it were false? And whether if were possible that whole Countries and Cities should believe it? Nay, whether the easiness and certainty of disproving it, would not bring them all into extremest contempt? Two things will be here objected: First, That then the Adversaries not believing, will be as strong against it, as the Disciples believing is for it. Answer, Read what is said before of the Adversaries incompetency, and it may satisfy to this. *Secondly, And consider also that the generality of the Adversaries did believe the matter of Fact, which is all that we are now enquiring after. The recital here of those multitudes of Testimonies that might be produced from Antiquity, is a work that my strait time doth prohibit; but is done by others far more able. Only that well known passage in Josephus I will here set down. In the time of Tiberias there was one Jesus, a wife man (at least if he was to be called a man) who was a worker of great Miracles, and a teacher of such who love the truth, and had many, as well Jews as Gentiles who clave unto him. This was Christ. And when Pilate upon his being accused by the chief men of our Nation, had sentenced him to be crucified, yet did not they who had first loved him forsake him: